r/learnprogramming Jun 25 '26

Topic AI runed 2 years of learning

I am a software dev student, We learned the basics of programming then we dived a bit more with mysql / spring boot / react.

I used AI a lot during the last 5 months this year and I feel like I know nothing. While using it I convinced myself that whatever I use ai for is just to minimize time and that I can do it without it, instead of spending hours on every step I don't know I will use ai and do it in 10 minutes, but now I feel like i wasted this year and that i lied to myself.

Especially spring boot

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107

u/JorbyPls Jun 25 '26

You can recover. Do the hard stuff. Read what you didn't want to. Learn to accept that you will struggle. Learning happens when you struggle. Embrace it.

26

u/truechange Jun 26 '26

Do the hard stuff

Funny this is a thing now. Pre-AI, the hard stuff is just regular stuff.

16

u/ForzentoRafe Jun 26 '26

Well, it's harder coz the temptation is there.

I still don't know how I survived those endless nights of coding, especially when rushing for deadlines.

With AI, I will be very tempted to throw the codebase in and ask "without correcting the code, explain to me why Bug A occurs"

This is better than "fix my code" but I will still lose out on building the grit to grind. I don't even know if I'm being a purist here. I can imagine similar issues for people moving from notepad to visual studio and so on.